


Descent

by De Orakle (Delphi)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: BDSM, Catharsis, Drama, Established Relationship, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-01-01
Updated: 2001-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:09:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/De%20Orakle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which needs are met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Descent

**Author's Note:**

> Exact date of publication unknown.

This time it chances to be a Wednesday, cool and clear. The wind is coming in from the north, carrying the first day of winter on its back. Night will reveal the first-quarter moon. Cancer is rising in the house of Mercury.

There is no pattern, or none that I can discern. The days upon which Severus chooses to profess his need are as much a mystery to me as the need itself. There is little method to our madness. There is only, I suspect, the waxing and waning of self-loathing in Severus's unforgiving heart.

Yet, there have been times when my own wishes have had some sway in the matter, and I remind myself thus; when Severus has cast eyes upon me in the Great Hall and something on my face has made it clear that I cannot stomach another of his 'treatments'—not on so fair a night, not after so fair a day—and nothing more is said.

Tonight, however, I cannot refuse him. The shadowy smudges under his eyes have darkened of late, and I see his hands growing restless, twitching like white spiders, as though some uncastable spell itches at their fingertips. He has his students in a panic, and even his peers give him wide berth.

"I won't be able to make it for tea, Headmaster. I'll be working late in the dungeons." This is what he said to me this morning in the staff room, and I know that if I do not go down to claim him, he will soon find himself a more willing executioner.

And what then? Shall I once again find him bloody and senseless in his rooms after he's staggered back from Hogsmeade; find him naked under his cloak and fading polyjuice disguise, covered in the bruised fingerprints and spell marks and semen of another man?

Shall it happen again that I lay my hand to his pulse and find nothing more than the weakest trickle of blood?

I am...fond of the sound of Severus's heartbeat, and would rather it not end before its time.

And so, here I proceed under cover of night and magic down to the dungeons, hallways splitting and staircases drifting beneath my feet as if the castle knows—and dare I think, does not entirely disapprove—of my errand.

The air grows chill and damp as I descend. Shivering, I am grateful for the green tea I bring for Severus and the warming charm on the cup. It is always so cold down here in the stone and shadow. Proper torches have not been lit for years, and the walls hold no memory of heat. And I wonder, as I often have, why Severus has made himself a home here. I have seen his pleasure, lounging at the hearth. Even the truly cold-blooded creatures thrive in heat.

I halt before an undistinguishable section of wall, tapping a corner brick with my wand and clearly speaking the word "Alterum."

Our security is not a password in the traditional sense, but rather an innovative charm of Filius's devising; it is my voice as well as my words that cause the low doorway to open up in between the bricks, the entrance into a small annex.

What I find inside is not unexpected. Severus is...prepared.

He lies on a long worktable, naked save for his blindfold and the cloth restraints at ankle and wrist. I suspect he has been lying here in the candlelit gloom for some time, performing the early parts of his ritual that I am not meant to witness.

He is all shadow and bone: pale skin and the black sash across his eyes, the hollows of his throat and hips, the black hair that dusts his body.

Ready to be bloodied and bruised, he is to my eyes lovely and terrible all at once.

I shiver, and though Severus lies still, his arms are clearly goosefleshed, his nipples hard and dark. His penis is limp against his thigh, but the rest of his body is tense and wakeful.

And so it begins.

I hang my cloak in the corner and set down the teacup, aware that Severus is straining to hear my every move; his head is cocked to one side, his breathing muted. On a dark whim, I tap my wand against the palm of my hand and watch as Severus twitches, pulling at the cloth that binds his arms spread-eagle to the table.

"I don't recall saying you could move," I quietly rebuke.

Severus stills, save for his manhood, which begins to stir.

I touch him then.

This was not a request made of me on that cold, bright morning in the infirmary—Severus's strange needs, his meticulously outlined desires and carefully averted eyes—but neither was it on the list of must-nots, and so skin-to-skin has been mounting in these encounters, a pleasure to us both.

My hands, still warm from the teacup, glide down to Severus's hips. I trace the dip of his hipbones with my thumbs. Like butterfly wings bursting out from the chrysalis of the skin, young and eager. His skin is softer than one might imagine, and his quiet sighs sweeter too.

It is almost enough to make me forget why I am here. But there is my wand, lying on the table between Severus's knees, reminding me.

For only a moment may I enjoy the gift of Severus's unsullied skin, stroking his thighs and fitting one warm hand around his throat to feel his moan. There is no trace on him of our last dalliance, though his stomach is hollow. He knows now not to eat before attempting this. Twice before, he has vomited with shock and I have had to slice through his bindings with a panicked spell to roll him over before he could choke.

The first time it happened, even Severus's prettiest pleas could not compel me to continue.

I feel him swallow, a complicated movement of muscle and artery beneath my hand. For an instant, my grip tightens. The memory begins in my hand: the fateful night on which Severus returned to Hogwarts, returned to me from Voldemort's service. I had put my hands around his neck then—to soothe his tired muscles, I had told myself.

His throat had felt so...soft.

I had wanted to comfort him, yes, my lost lamb, my prodigal son. But for a moment, I had wanted to throttle him as well. To choke the life out of him until he fell into my arms and was once again a harmless boy for me to hold. I had wanted to hurt him for his stupidity and his foolish pride, to give him a taste in blood of the pain he had caused others. Caused me.

Perhaps that was when this truly began. When Severus's dark eyes had looked into mine, and read my thoughts, and lit up in a sudden mad understanding of where his penance might be sought.

Perhaps. It no longer seems to matter.

I take up my wand and push the tip into that softest spot at the bottom of Severus's belly where the skin has never seen sunlight and the hair is still fine and straight.

Severus is holding his breath.

I lick my lips and whisper, "Verbero."

Green light flashes beneath Severus's skin, and in a heartbeat he lurches off the table, barely restrained at wrist and ankle. His stomach muscles twitch helplessly as he screams through clenched teeth. I watch in silence as he grows hard, his penis curving up towards a stomach still in spasms. His jaw goes slack, and he whimpers.

"Good boy...such a good boy," I tell him, trailing one finger along the underside of his ill-gotten erection, pushing in at the slit until Severus squirms and exhales quickly as if he's about to sneeze.

"Again," he whispers when he's caught his breath, and I know he doesn't mean my hand on him.

"Is that an order?" My wand is eager, static charge playing at its tip.

Severus inclines his head sharply to the negative. I can feel his glare through the blindfold, and there is some horror in finding that I am smiling when I once again touch my wand to him.

"Verbero."

His sides

"Verbero."

His thighs.

"Verbero."

The tender spot just behind his scrotum.

His body jerks sharply like a puppet on its strings. He curses with no real direction, and his coarse words excite me. I take a moment to stroke his muscles until they and I find some temporary peace.

One must retain complete control. It is a cautious havoc to be wreaked in the body, with a mind kept to force and location when shocking muscles into helpless seizures and bursting blood vessels like balloons. I've found myself cultivating an art of a sort in raising up bruises, in guiding the destruction under Severus's sallow skin. And yet no artist's touch is perfect—a chance tremble in my hand and a spark bursts too close to Severus's ribs.

He chokes.

In an instant I am around the table, cradling his head so that he can expel the drop of blood from his lungs. The coughs are violent and deep in his chest, rattling his entire body. He leans back into my hands as they subside, and thankfully the spittle on his lips is clear.

"I'm sorry." I brush his hair out of his face, unsticking a few strands where they've caught at the corner of his mouth. I rub the vivid bruise at his collarbone.

"Don't apologise," he says impatiently, his voice hoarse. "Just..." He shifts his hips and clenches the muscles of his thighs.

Of course. I stroke him back to full hardness. The ease of this familiarity is beginning to haunt me in my life above. Sitting with Severus at meals, watching him from a distance, even hearing his name in passing, it will occur to me that I alone in the castle know the pleasures of him. His long, lean nakedness; what the skin of his sack feels like cupped in one's palm; the small sounds he makes when a magic-charged wand is drawn along his most sensitive skin.

I wonder, suddenly, what he would do if I tasted him right now. If I took him into my mouth before he could protest. It isn't a must-not; a long leisurely suck is not a kiss, after all.

And even if he didn't want it, what recourse has he? He is bound securely and is in no clear state to free himself. Helpless and bruised, it isn't kindness he wants from me. He craves pain, hungers for as much degradation as his pride will allow. He _wants_ me to—

Severus pulls away from my touch, and for a shameful moment I am certain that he is privy to my dark thoughts, but he only moans desperately. "Please. Do it, before I..."

And so, "Verbero," into the strawberry birthmark high on his inner thigh.

"Verbero," against the base of his erection as he shakes and moans like a lunatic.

"Verbero," with my hand wrapped around him and green serpents swimming through his blood, higher and faster until Severus bodily seizes, blood issuing from his nose in a bright red sunburst.

He breathes in—a garbled sound—as "Verbero," his thighs tremble violently and he shoots his seed onto his stomach in cathartic spurts.

He smiles now, a horrible sight: blood in the cracks between his teeth and silvery-clear tracks running down from under his blindfold.

"Again," he begs of me. "Again, again, just one more time, again."

His head rolls from side to side as if he is about to pitch a fit. There are twin fever-spots high on his cheeks, and he is sniffing blood through his nose, licking it from his lips.

Some newborn voice in my mind wonders how long it will be before I grant Severus's pleas for a second round, and I silence it only with great effort.

It will not be tonight.

Instead, I slip my hands under him to where his lower back is arched over the table, and I attempt to work the blood out of the worst bruises at his sides. He is quieting, coming down from his pain, though his bloodied lips still shape words.

I silence him, trailing two fingers through his spent seed and pressing them into his mouth. He licks and gently bites. His mouth is very hot and deep. There is blood on my knuckles when I withdraw.

"Goodnight, dear boy."

And it is over.

I take my leave, though my thoughts stay behind with Severus and his secrets. He continues his ritual, his exorcism, without me; my part has been played out. I suppose he is untying himself, removing the blindfold. Cleaning up the blood and semen and healing what marks will show above a robe's collar. I have watched him move many mornings after, and know that some bruises he keeps until they fade. He is thinking his thoughts and drinking his tea, and hopefully he has found some satisfaction where I am left wanting.

My shame is strong in my heart and stiff beneath my robes.

I climb the stairs slowly, thinking of pain and pleasure, blood and semen; life and release and confusion as they all are. Severus's blood is still smeared on my fingers. It tastes appropriately bitter.

Curiously, I feel only colder as I reach the hallways of lit torches and fireplaces. I burrow my hands into my pockets and find that my wand is still warm, repeating my hexes to itself in fading echoes. I stop—realising with unpleasant surprise that I have been whispering "verbero" as my fingertips brush against the ash and dragon heartstring.

I rub my hand against my hip, my palm suddenly itching, and I force myself to wonder not for the first time whether it is truly altruism that binds me in Severus's service. Whether it is merely confidence in my skill that makes me unwilling to let him find another; only concern that makes my refusals rarer and rarer.

Is it something as simple as anger that allows me to feed his pain with my own?

I do not know...truly, I do not know. But duty or pleasure, it is love nonetheless.

I think of the phases of the moon and the progression of the school term; of Severus's anger and release; of the strange movements of the stars.

Perhaps it will not be so long until the next time.


End file.
